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Monday, May 21, 2012

MEGABED and other true stories

We're not a bunch of co-sleeping hippies, I swear (well, maybe a little) but with the exception of Cooper, who snores too loudly, we all slept in the same bed last night. Let me explain.

OK, so first thing: I don't think I've shared this with you yet, but we...have a MEGABED. More accurately it is two queen-sized mattresses pushed up next to each other--I would show you a picture but it looks fairly terrible (remember that we, two adult professionals in our mid-thirties have never actually owned a bedframe, let alone a boxspring or any of the fancy bedding accoutrement, unless you count that one weird memory foam pillow Joe has that he swears helps his neck) and anyway, I have more pride than to reveal how terrible our bedroom looks. But just envision two queen mattresses on the floor, next to each other. Hell, even pretend the beds are made, it's the world of imagination: NO LIMITS! So that's a really wide bed.

Our intention was not to make a MEGABED, of course--one of those queen sized mattresses used to live in our guest room, back when we rented a house and had a guest room. Then we moved to this house, which is a three bedroom, and given that we no longer had the extra space (sorry, guests--sofabeds are groovy!) we stuck the queen mattress in Mack's room and let him have the biggest toddler bed ever. Eventually, this morphed into a twin-sized Lightning McQueen bed in the hopes that it might actually get him to, you know, stay in his own bed at night (Mack has an unfortunate habit of climbing into our bed at 2:00am--he does it then because he knows when you're WEAK) and while this bribery through themed furniture has kind of worked we still needed a place to put the old queen mattress. Not having any other options, we just put it in our room. At first we stacked both mattresses on top of each other, but this option ended up being too squashy, so we just laid them side by side, exposed it to some gamma rays, and that's how MEGABED was born. (This is called an "origin story." Technical writer stuff, you understand.) It's indecently large but it's also like having your own bouncy castle so who's to say if we're trashy with our floor mattresses and no furniture? YOU? (Maybe you.)

So Cal was sick yesterday. Really, he's overdue, since he hasn't been sick once this whole school year, but as timing goes this illness is particularly bad, given that the last day of school is literally tomorrow. (The South!) Also, it was a gastrointestinal illness, while benign enough, tend to be somewhat more dramatic and, shall we say, exuberant than your garden variety colds. So after it was clear that he was still feeling poorly by evening and would likely be missing school today, we told Cal that, if he liked, he could sleep with me and Joe in "the big bed" overnight. Partially so we could keep an eye on him, you know, but also partially (disclosure: mostly) because I trust that my own reaction time is faster than that of a six year-old boy. We have off-white berber carpeting in all the bedrooms, you see.

Mack, not to be outdone, also insisted on sleeping in the big bed with everyone. He also, for the record, wanted to have a fever and be throwing up and taking medicine, because while he was perfectly healthy and felt fine, he sensed some inequity in the compared situations, and where there is inequity, SURELY THERE IS INJUSTICE. I let him have some Gatorade, but I drew the line at giving him medicine, even placebo medicine (an M&M or the like--Cal likes those grape Tylenol Meltaways) because I don't want Mack to get the idea that medicine is something you can just take because you want to. One of the first Pediatric patients I ever had to pronounce dead was the victim of a Tylenol overdose (granted, it was a teenager attempting suicide--attempting and ultimately succeeding, I guess), and although it's like WOAH, DEBBIE DOWNER, my point is--don't fuck around with medications, kid.

Anyway, we'd argued about why he couldn't take medicine if he wasn't sick for, like, an hour earlier that evening (note: you will never win an argument with a three year-old, no matter how measured and rational your points are, because they are all insane) so when he asked to sleep in the big bed I was like FINE, WHATEVER, JUST STOP TALKING ALREADY. Mack isn't the easiest person to sleep with, as he tends to rotate between "The Roundhouse Kick" and "H is for Hell" with a sprinkle of "Jazz Hands" thrown in to keep things spicy--but if he was willing to keep the peace I was willing to meet him halfway. Therein is the largesse afforded by MEGABED.

Anyway, I won't say it was the best night of sleep that I ever got, but at least there was sleeping, and no one threw up on anyone else, which I count as an unexpected bonus.

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Also to be filed under "Hippies, comma, we are not" is that I cut Mack's hair yesterday. I've been cutting his hair for a while (I don't think we've even tried to take him to a professional barber yet, given how poor Cal's experience was at this age, both in terms of cooperation and the resultant quality of the haircut) but I think it turned out OK. Mack's hair is a little wavier than Cal's so it tends to be more forgiving--both in terms of it getting a little too long and in terms of covering up any small errors in the trimming process--but we live in Atlanta and it tends to get hot here, so I like to keep it short, to avoid the matted hanks of plastered fur look. We can't all be Tim Riggins, son.

Anyway, as I was giving Mack his haircut, I considered if I should take pictures and do a tutorial on boy's home haircuts, but then I realized how very ridiculous that idea was, because really--I don't know what the hell I'm doing. So my only advice to you is: just go for it, there's only so bad you can screw it up, and just like all bleeding stops eventually, all hair eventually grows out. That and make sure you have something good on TV, because that's how you trick them into staying still.

* * *

Finally, gratuitous photos of our backyard. Unexpected how all this greenery is starting to grow on me. I pretend like it's about us asserting our dominion over nature or some such thing, but really, I just think it's pretty.

24 comments:

Why is grape medication so yummy tasting? I remember the allure of the grape Dimetapp growing up (do they even still make that?), and feel Mack's pain. But whatever, he got to sleep in the MEGABED, which I didn't even know was a real thing!

I invested in a pair of electric hair clippers for my two boys- never regretted that purchase. With the little comb piece on the end, it keeps all the hair the same length. And being in the south as well, the shorter the better!

I used to give my boy a cut at home. It worked out well when he was younger, but now he refuses to let me go near his head with a pair of scissors and maniacal laughter. I don't know what's gotten into him, really.

Oh my goodness - the laughing! My three year old is just like Mack when it comes to medicine and arguing and sleeping!!! (I am in the OR currently and had to conceal my gales of laughter behind the drapes.)

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